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Can I please install this application?

Why do installers still not work right? It's now into Mac OS X 10.2.4, and I still have to move iMovie 3.0.1 out of where I have put it into /Applications so that it 'exists' for the iMovie 3.0.2 update. The same thing for iCal. I had to move it from where I wanted it into /Applications so that it would install.

Hello Apple, it's 2003, do you know where your find function is at? This is inexcusable.

Totally.

Utterly.

There are so many ways to find a file on a hard drive, but Apple can only seem to use a way that dates back to the beginning of the hard drive. Considering that you can update an OS when things are not in /Applications, using (presumably) the same installer, I think we can maybe handle a traumatic notion that people sometimes move stuff.

Oh no, we actually place things in a different location than Apple!

Lest we think i'm picking on Apple, other companies are just as bad. It seems almost impossible, (or rare at least), for a company using InstallerVise to set the bit that says, "Only look on the local file systems for the application you are updating." See, if that bit is not set correctly, and you are using AFS, a distributed secure file system used by many universities and companies, then VISE will happily do what it was told and try to search the entire AFS tree. This unfortunately involves iterating through the filesystems of 125 companies, universities, and military installations in over five countries. But because of how AFS mounts, to VISE, it looks like a local directory: /afs. It's not VISE'S fault. It's doing what it's told.

GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. In other words, a computer doing something stupid is the result of a stupid human at the keyboard.

Adobe is another one...every time I install stuff from Adobe, I have to quit everything. Why?!? I managed to install databases, network administration applications, and development environments without turning my pre-emptive multitasking OS into a color, alpha-channeled version of System 6 sans MultiFinder, so what is so special about Photoshop and InDesign? Well, in InDesign's case, the only way I've found to successfully update it is to log in as root, so that's just a "special" application anyway. Note that I'm not talking about having to reboot after the install. There are reasons for that, and it's an inconvenience of far lesser magnitude than having to sit there and stare at a progress bar because after all, I'm installing (some self-important vendor name here)'s application. Isn't that enough stimulation for any human on the planet?

Of course, there are vertical market vendors who insist that their version of a common application needs to be explicitly installed for every physical user on a Mac OS X box. Got five users on the box? Hope you bought five copies.

(Insert Charlie Brown missing the football scream here)

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of simple installations being turned into painful exercises in vodka consumption. Especially because it's inexcusable.

Let's face it...installing is nothing more than copying a file from here, to there. if you're updating an application, then you move the old version to the trash, and copy in the new version, write a log file that tells the user where things went, and you're done. If it's any more complex than that, rethink your process. If I can install Microsoft Office without agony, I should be able to install anything on the planet the same way.

Other than maybe OS updates, you don't need a convoluted installer package, (and having played with them, they all are painful to use.) Every Mac comes with the only thing you need to install files:

AppleScript

It can copy files, check system versions, handle errors, present a nice interface, etc. It's a bit harder to create problems ala the iTunes 2 disk erase functionality, since it's designed for Macs, not for Unix systems. I can guarantee that it's on every Mac running Mac OS X. It's free, it has a great licensing cost, namely nothing. It has a host of excellent free and commercial development environments, and, if you need to, you can use it to interface with the shell environment.

But if Apple, and Adobe used AppleScript like that, then people would realize that you don't need to pay oodles of money to install files, and deal with overly complex setups that lead to error.

And then where would we be?

john

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